AUSTIN — Nine-year-old Ben Sears spent months in a coma last year after a truck smacked into him as he was getting out of the car.

"It's a miracle that he lived," Ben's aunt, Kathy Sokolic, said Thursday from the Capitol, where she pleaded with lawmakers to lower the speed limit on city streets to prevent tragedies like the one her family experienced.

Rep. Celia Israel, an Austin Democrat, has filed a bill that would reduce the speed limit on city streets by 5 mph and, she hopes, prevent car accident deaths. Israel, along with city officials from across Texas, joined Sokolic and other families whose loved ones were hurt or killed in pedestrian accidents to ask lawmakers to support lower speed limits.

"There's a lot of ways that a slower speed limit would help," Sokolic said.

The presumed speed limit in Texas cities is 30 mph. The truck that hit Ben was traveling faster then 30 mph when it struck the boy in his family-friendly Austin neighborhood. Israel's House Bill 1368 would reduce the speed limit on streets like that to 25 mph.

"That's just too fast for our slow neighborhood streets," Austin Mayor Steve Adler said. Austin had a record-breaking 102 traffic fatalities last year. Almost 70 percent of them were concentrated in 8 percent of Austin roads.

A study by AAA Texas found that decreasing the speed limit to 25 mph would increase a pedestrian's odds of surviving a collision by 43 percent.

"Five miles per hour is a small price to pay for the life of a child," Israel said.

In 2014, the Austin City Council asked traffic experts and city planners to develop an action plan to reduce traffic deaths. The report outlines a strategy to reduce traffic deaths to zero by 2025. It recommended reducing Austin speed limits "to minimize serious and fatal crash risk" and working with other Texas cities to do the same.

"Speed is the most important factor to regulate," the report stated.

Even legal speeds resulted in serious injury or death, according to the report. At 40 mph, 9 in 10 people who are hit while walking do not survive. At 20 mph, 9 in 10 people survive the crash, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

"This is a good policy," said Israel. "Every Texas city is going to support this."

Israel's Safe Neighborhood Streets bill isn't the only transportation bill on the docket this session. House Bill 62 and Senate Bill 31 would make using a phone while driving a misdemeanor offense. Texas is one of only four states that don't ban texting while driving, and this is the fifth time lawmakers will try to pass the bill.